During the Trump-Putin “press conference” we just witnessed, an unusual moment came when a reporter asked Putin directly: Does the Russian government have any compromising material on Donald Trump or his family?
I did hear these rumors that we allegedly collected compromising material on Mr. Trump when he was visiting Moscow. Now, distinguished colleague, let me tell you this, when President Trump visited Moscow back then I didn't even know that he was in Moscow. I treat President Trump with utmost respect, but back then, when he was a private individual, a businessman, nobody informed me that he was in Moscow.
But let's take St. Petersburg economic forum, for instance. There were over 500 American businessmen, high-ranking, high-level ones. I don't even remember the last names of each and every one of them. Look, do you think that we tried to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them? Well, it's difficult to imagine, and utter nonsense of a bigger scale than this. Well, please, just disregard these issues and don't think about this anymore.
That’s not quite a denial. Putin is essentially saying that Donald Trump wasn’t an important enough person to merit such efforts, which would no doubt enrage Trump if he understood the insult Putin was tossing his way. Putin answered only that it would be “utter nonsense” to think the state collected “compromising material on each and every single one” of 500 different Americans.
Mind you, it doesn’t much matter what Putin does or doesn’t say here. Putin is categorically denying a Russian interference campaign in the U.S. elections that our own intelligence services know, for a fact, happened, even as named members of the Russian government are indicted for those acts; he faces no penalties in his own country for lying about whatever he wishes to. But the way he framed his non-denials—saying that he personally didn’t have any knowledge of Trump’s presence and certainly would not have compiled information on his 500 American peers—is a wee bit interesting.